


The Distraction

by boxoftheskyking



Series: Many Roads to Hell [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, TW: Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-17
Updated: 2012-05-17
Packaged: 2017-11-05 13:29:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/406988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxoftheskyking/pseuds/boxoftheskyking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Jim makes his final move, Sebastian is the one left to clean up the mess.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Distraction

**Author's Note:**

> Can be a standalone, but is canon for the Many Roads 'verse.

Sebastian felt weak, after. It wasn’t a grieving feeling, just a frightening looseness in his joints, like his arms might snap at the elbows.

When he was a child, he suddenly remembered, his mother had a skeleton made out of sticks, lopsided and painted a dirty white. She would hang it outside their door on Halloween night. This was when they lived in Gort, with Dad and all. After Gort they didn’t have time for things like Halloween.

That’s what he felt like, the skeleton, made of old sticks and held together by rusty wires and a bad paint job. 

He stopped in the bathroom on the fourth floor of St. Bart’s, janitor’s uniform making him nearly invisible to the rushing crowds of people.

“Did you hear?”

“Did you?”

“Jumped right off the building! Can you believe it?”

“My goodness, they allow all sorts—”

His cart was heavy with the weight of dead flesh, empty eyes. Not a hardship, though. He’d carried Jim before.

He had thought, stupidly, that he might not be able to get the blood off his hands. He wore sterile blue gloves to hide it, stained nearly purple from the inside out, as he pushed his cart off the elevator and through the halls. His shoulders slumped to broadcast a long day of hard work with nothing to say. An invisible man.

The blood did wash off, though, too quickly. Each drop circled the drain once, twice, before sliding out of sight. He grabbed for it, watched it slip between his fingers like so many dark red minnows. Tadpoles, maybe.

His forehead found the wall on it’s own, slamming into drywall and nicking the corner of an exposed stud. The cupboard was too small, he couldn’t breathe; the running of the tap was a roar, a waterfall, a broken dam. He reached up and pulled the broken chain hanging from the lightbulb and was plunged into darkness. He thought it would be peaceful, but the dark was like a cloud of smoke, slipping into his ears, his nose, finding its way between his lips. He held onto the door handle, pulling it tight as though fighting off an invading horde, and slid down into a squat, hanging off the door, head dangling between his arms. 

He tried so hard not to make any noise, but the dark pulls things out of a person that shouldn’t be there in the first place. He hissed and growled, clamping down on the keen that was scratching its way up his esophagus. He managed to catch it and hold it, somewhere at the back of his throat. It fought and kicked there, scraping his flesh and pushing off his tongue with spiked, clawed feet. It made him gag, but he couldn’t make himself throw up.

When it passed, he felt carved out, an empty skull. He couldn’t understand the wetness around his eyes, where it had come from. He wiped it away and straightened, blinking indifferently at the mess in the sink. He didn’t feel a thing. 

When he left the hospital, he was humming to himself. 


End file.
